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Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Austria’s Shift Right . . . or Left

The Königsee in Austria

Both the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post commented on Austria’s
recent election that there was a shift to the right.Both papers cited gains by the “Freedom
Party,” Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, founded in 1956 as a right-wing
populist and national-conservative political party originally led by a former National
Socialist and SS officer opposed to socialism and Catholic “clericalism.”The party’s advance to the number two spot in
the number of seats in the legislature is attributed to growing sentiment
against immigrants.

Most of the animus against
immigrants in Europe and the U.S. seems to be based on three factors:

·Fears
that immigrants will take jobs away from native born workers,

·Fears
that immigrants will take government benefits away from native born citizens,
and

·Fears
that immigrants will fundamentally change the national culture.

Of the three, the first two
would seem to be more immediate.The
third only seems to come out at election time — which is probably enough, since
most people are only interested in government these days when it affects their pocketbook.

Frankly, we can’t tell too
much difference between the so-called rightwing positions and the leftwing.The language might be slightly different, but
the goal ends up being pretty much the same: keep undesirables out and keep the
goodies for us and those we like.The
only thing that changes is the specific group or individuals defined as
undesirable.

All this underscores the fact
that, as long as some people are dependent on others, there isn’t going to be
too much difference between “right” and “left.”Nor is there going to be much difference in the solutions the
politicians come up with to try and deal with the “new things” of the modern
world . . . things that have their roots in the fact that ordinary people have
been losing power at an accelerating rate for the past two and a half centuries
or so.

And why have ordinary people
been losing power?In a nutshell,
technology has been advancing and displacing human labor from production.This benefits those who own technology, and
operates to the detriment of those who don’t.

At one time, human labor was
alone sufficient to generate a living income.Now human labor has been supplemented or replaced entirely by technology.

"Rightwing or leftwing, you're still enslaved by past savings!"

The obvious solution that
Louis Kelso saw was that those people who own only labor must be put in the
position of now owning technology as well.The problem is that neither the leftwing nor the rightwing see any way
to do this.The only question is who
gets stuck with the bill for supporting all the people who are unable to own
technology?

Surprisingly enough, both the
rightwing and the leftwing have exactly the same answer: “the other guy,”
meaning “somebody with money who isn’t me.”

Here’s a novel idea: Why not make it possible
for people who don’t own technology to own technology, so that when their labor
doesn’t sell for enough, they can still be productive, and thereby gain an
adequate and secure income?

Nor is this
pie-in-the-sky.Technology put to
productive use has a unique characteristic: if it does not have the potential
to generate enough marketable goods and services to pay for itself and yield a
reasonable return to the owner . . . nobody will want to own it.

"Sehr gut. That's settled. Let's party."

That being the case, it’s
only necessary to arrange for the seller of the technology (or somebody else) to
agree to wait for payment until the technology produces enough marketable goods
and services to pay for itself — which is how most technology has been financed
throughout history, anyway.As Dr.
Harold G. Moulton, president of Brookings Institution from 1928 to 1952, noted
in his 1935 book, The Formation of
Capital, periods of rapid capital formation (a fancy way of saying periods
during which people purchased new technology and put it into production) were
always preceded by periods of increased consumer demand that gave entrepreneurs
a reason to want to put more technology into production.

That meant that the savings
that most people assume are essential to finance new technology didn’t
exist.Why?Because the money had already been spent on
consumption.So where did the money come
from to pay for the new technology?From
contracts promising to pay for the new technology in the future out of the
future production of the technology itself.

This is the whole idea behind
the financing ideas embodied in Capital Homesteading,
which might be something that voters in all countries should be considering,
rather than how to divvy up a shrinking pool of existing wealth.